Guy had a basically new Cambridge CXA80 for sale on craigslist for a while. I snapped it up when he dropped the price to $500. Replaces the Audiolab 8000A, which I can use elsewhere.
Using an NAD PP2e phono preamp, as the Cambridge doesn’t have one built in. Wow. Really sounds great. Detailed, but still nice and warm.
Roon/Tidal/FLAC played from the Mac Mini into the Cambridge USB sounds fantastic, too. I’ll keep comparing that to using the Topping D50 DAC (which supports DSD), but the CXA80 DAC (24-bit/192kHz) sounds really nice and full. Very happy, as I don’t have any DSD “files” at this point, but the Onkyo plays SACD’s.
Source is my iMac with iTunes. Streaming by the Apple TV 3rd generation into HDMI of the Yamaha AV that is configured for bi-amping. After reading all the tips and being helped by a dealer who demonstrated how much better speakers sound when placed farther away from the wall.
And here I am enjoying the Stories from Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson from Austin Texas, who also played at the Gruene Music Hall in New Braunfels Texas, which is the best place I know of on this planet to enjoy life country music life in a very pleasant atmosphere.
The system is good enough to take me back there when I listen to the music.
Oh thank you @Famavolat. It depends, in Germany they lead the charts so much and sing the reviewers from Audio, Stereo, Stereoplay and other German Magazines so much praise that you get the same funny feeling reading reviews of UK made equipment in What HiFi.
But outside Germany, they are under estimated. They sound great, especially since I pulled them from the wall a couple of inches. We had them also with us when we lived in Texas where we had a huge living room and they were placed 4 ft from the panoramic windows, (with curtains) there they really were in their element, due to the larger room the set needed to play louder, which is their sweat spot operation, I suspect the Yamy AV Receiver to be the culprit.
I wanted to replace it with a full Stellar Stack, but there are 2 issues with that:
like reported elsewhere, I have one of those Stellar Gain Cell DACs in my home office that produce sound thumps when switching to Home Theatre Channel in HT mode
PS Audio does not offer synergetic sources yet and that Yamy CD/BluRay combo sounds very good through HDMI via the AV Receiver, also it offers a built in Phono stage, although I am afraid that unit is rather a sales feature to make the AV receiver look complete than a piece of art.
Since it is in the living room the home designer in charge (my wife) does not want a bunch (as few as possible) of different shaped or even colored boxes. The Apple TV is small enough, the TV set top box unfortunately inevitable and the Switch is our children’s and that fact off course allows for exceptions in the rules. But is not large either. I love the old Thorens TD 105 it still sounds good and has the same width as the Yamaha set.
I bet gaming sound great through that system. I know mine does- LOL! Going to active loudspeakers saved me huge money in both my electrical bill and having to regularly re-tube the sixteen 6550 or KT88s in my ARC monoblocks. Obtaining four matched quads of quality NOS tubes was no-joke expensive. Now I can game relentlessly with much less guilt!
Wait a minute. I forgot about the expensive bulb in my projector…
Rack may be low, close to the ground. Now your fantastic equipment catches a lot of debris and dust. On long term not good for the sound quality either.
I don’t know Baldy, I agree perhaps my comment is a bit harsh, but meant to be positive. @tonydennison indeed has nice electronics sitting on the admittedly good looking rug.
But his electronics is catching debris (dirt), dust, floor vibration, and is being bumped into or scratched by the vacuum cleaner. Those are facts and as such it seems to be a poor advise to say it’s good while for many practical reasons it is not.
I’m saying that maybe the rug isolates all of the components and speakers from each other very well and maybe the environment is nearly dust free. It would be nice to dedicate that much floor space to components but I don’t have it available so I am forced to stack.
